A Day to Remember

The success of the Iraqi election wasn't really such a big surprise. We know that the anti-war media is painting a bleak and unbalanced picture of Iraq. Nevertheless, the election was a thrilling non-surprise, a tribute to the human spirit. And, specifically, to the human spirit of the courageous Iraqi people.

In an exuberant paean to December 15, Ben Elliot, a Reagan White House speechwriter, notes that yesterday "marks a turning point in the Middle East as millions of Iraqi voters literally carried their country across the rubicon to become the first free and democratic Arab nation."

Encouragingly, the Sunni faction, which boycotted the last election, turned out in force. New York Times reporter John Burns gauged the change among the Sunni population by hanging out with some Sunni children. "A new willingness to distance themselves from the insurgency, an absence of hostility for Americans, a casual contempt for Saddam Hussein, a yearning for Sunnis to find a place for themselves in the post-Hussein Iraq--the boys' themes were their parents', too, only more boldly expressed."

Ya gotta hand it to the indefatigueable Washington Post, which found an anti-American angle in the large Sunni turnout: "The Sunni outpouring was a long-hoped-for victory for the Bush administration, concluding a U.S.-planned timeline aimed at establishing a government that will hold together after U.S. troops withdraw. An overwhelming number of Sunnis made clear, however, that they were drawn to the polls by their dislike of the U.S. occupation and Iraq's U.S.-supported, Shiite-led transitional government."

For the Post reporter, the real heroes of yesterday's voting seemed to be a temporarily pacific bunch of "insurgents":

"But at least one Iraqi insurgent group made good on a promised election day moratorium on attacks, even putting masked gunmen on the streets to guard voters against the foreign fighters of al Qaeda in Iraq and let the marginalized Sunni minority try to address grievances through ballots rather than bullets."

Just for the record, the Sunni minority was marginalized because it refused to vote last time. And, oh yeah, some of them were in cahoots with a bloody tyrant who terrorized the Shiites. But I'm glad that they're switching from bullets to the ballot. We can thank the steadfastness of the Bush administration for that. It was bound to happen--if we stayed the course.

Yesterday could not have brought unalloyed joy to the Defeatocrats. Military expert Ralph Peters asked:

"Where were the 'Pull our troops out now!' protesters yesterday, as 15 million voters from every ethnic and religious group in Iraq went to the polls to shape their country's future?

"Surely, the anti-war crowd couldn't all have gone to the movies to see 'Brokeback Mountain'?"

Columnist John Podhoretz contrasts the courageous Iraqis and the white flag Democrats (you might also enjoy this cartoon posted on Powerline):

"In each election, turnout was higher than the last--and the word being used everywhere to describe yesterday's voting numbers is 'overwhelming.' Sunnis who had stupidly decided to boycott Election No. 1 finally came out in force. They've figured it out, even though the lunatics on the left in this country and elsewhere haven't yet: Representative government has come to Iraq, and you gotta represent.

"While Iraqis braved the terrorists, many Americans trembled before them.

"'We can't win in Iraq,' shouted Howard Dean, who might have confused Iraq with Iowa, where he couldn't win."

The defeatists may have taken the day off yesterday. But they'll be back because, as Peters explains:

Our abandon-Iraq dissidents are driven by two things that have little to do with the situation in Mesopotamia.

First, they're just plain anti-Bush, closet authoritarians who have no more respect for the American voter than they do for the Iraqis. They long for voter rolls restricted to like-minded intellectuals--and a president who delivers his state-of-the-union address in French.

Which brings us to the second characteristic of the 'declare failure' crowd: They don't much like democracy, no matter where it appears. Have any of those obsessed with giving Saddam a fair trial praised Iraq's attempt to build a democracy? Do they really believe that the millions who voted yesterday were better off under a brutal dictatorship? Was Saddam more humane and just than a free election?

Tony Snow explains why the pullout mindset is the logical extension of the philosophy that drives the Democrats.